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not the normal slow PC question, becomes unusable quickly

Hi all, I have an old Sony Vaio, P4 2.8 XPhome. Used primarily as a monitor for CCTV. Worked fine for years. I also use it as a back up PC and my daughter has recently been using it for normal things, web browsing, banking, facebook etc. About a month back it started to become noticeably slow. Now from bootup it will take 1 to 2hrs before it becomes unusable, reboot and it is fine again for a few hrs. Tried everything I could think of including another Hdd with a new instal of XP Pro, still the same problem.
memory a bit on the small side at 512 but I would have thought that was enough for what is required. Also has the same problem if I take the CCTV out of the equation. Has to be hardware in my opinion but need help please.

Hi again, have done as suggested in your link as a work around, both drives now UDMA after restart. I can't say if that has worked until it has been running for a while, thanks for your help, hope it sorts it.

Bumpkin, XP's Task Manager is a useful tool in diagnosing performance issues. If we can pinpoint the exact cause then it'll make fixing the problem a lot easier and quicker. The next time it slows down to the point of being unusable, do this:

1) Open Task Manager and click the "Performance" tab. Look at the "CPU Usage" graph and report back whether it's showing the usual ~5% when idle or constantly busy close to 100%.

2) In the "Physical Memory (K)" section let us know what it says for Total.

3) In the "Commit Charge (K) section report back the values for Total and Peak.

If I notice something significant in your findings then I'll tell you what you need to do next.

Hi again, sorry for the delay. wee eddie, there are 2 drives one XP Home and one XP Pro, neither more than 20% used. Problem occurs whichever one I boot from. Comodo AV and firewall.
Woodchip, I just loaded the OS XP Pro and a few bits from the net, Firefox, Comodo, etc. Ran Comodo AV and malwarebytes, nothing found.
Secret Squirrel, I have just re-booted it, will do as you suggest when it starts to play up again. Thanks all.

Secret-Squirrel, been running now for about an hour and a half, booted from XP pro HDD. Working fine at the moment (Murphy's Law). Here are the figures from task manager at present, I will post any significant change when it starts to malfunction assuming I can still access Task Manager.

CPU usage idle 8% to 30%

CPU usage when running CCTV system 70% to 85% with occasional peaks up to 100%

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